


Run away with me, Feyre.

by Artemisausten



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: ANGST OKAY, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and Romance, Angst and Tragedy, Blood Feuds, F/M, I can easily be convinced to write more of this, Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, Modern AU, Romeo and Juliet References, Secret Marriage, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28276797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemisausten/pseuds/Artemisausten
Summary: When he looks at Feyre, Rhys thinks, he feels a kind of awe. She loves him.  After everything their families have been through, the hatred and violence that’s marked their days more than any other events in their lives, Feyre Archeron loves Rhysand Night.“I want to run away with you.”_____________________________________A Romeo & Juliet story where Rhys and Feyre are secretly seeing each other even though their families are sworn enemies. Was written as a one-shot, but I'll be honest, I almost always want to write a sequel piece. So, yeah. I'm hopeless.
Relationships: Feyre Archeron & Rhysand, Feyre Archeron/Rhysand, Feyre Archeron/Tamlin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	Run away with me, Feyre.

**Author's Note:**

> I got sort of inspired to revisit my love of Shakespeare while reading "These Violent Delights" by Chloe Gong and decided that THE WORLD NEEDS SOME ROMEO & JULIET FEYSAND. Even though I'm sure someone's already done it.
> 
> But as I said on my tumblr page when I posted this, I'm absolutely dying to write more Shakespeare Feysand (or any couple from the books), so if you have ideas, come find me @artemisausten and hit me up in my asks. Or send me a cat video. I'm open to both options.

It has to be a secret.

It grates on them sometimes how much it has to be kept a secret—how much they can’t just walk down the street together, hand in hand. Rhys can’t count the number of times he’s imagined taking Feyre out on a real date. He’d like to take her to that little gallery near his home, the one with that collection of rare editions and art from people Feyre has probably never heard of before, like Loui Jover or Leonid Afremov. He’d like to see the way her eyes light up at the bold use of color and the subtle impressions and forms captured on canvas and paper. He wants desperately to see her smile at him with wild abandon as she laughs and clings to his arm, dragging him further into the gallery and pausing at every single piece on display. Rhysand Night longs to take Feyre Archeron for a long walk by the river, his arm draped around her shoulder in a way that almost looks casual but is really just a way of saying _she’s with me._

Dear God, how he’d love to say those words aloud to another living soul— _she’s with me_.

“Why do you look like that?” Feyre asks him one day as he’s thinking about it, his gaze on the window of the quiet hotel room they’ve snuck away to. It’s rainy in Velaris and the window is blurry with the fog and droplets that have settled there, but Rhys can see the city beyond it and can’t help himself imagining what it would be like to be there.

With Feyre.

To kiss her in the broad daylight and savor the feel of her lips against his own, the curves of her body pressed against his. The way she smiles and turns away, self-conscious about that one tooth that isn’t perfectly straight like the rest.

“Like what?” Rhys knows what she means, of course. It’s not the first time he’s been caught daydreaming or looking wistfully out into the distance and imagining another life. But he wants to hear her say it. He just wants to hear her voice.

“Like you’re attending a funeral.” Feyre’s voice is small and playful as she curls against him in the bed, resting her head on the downy pillow as she reaches out and plays with an absent strand of Rhys’ hair. She likes these moments the best, she thinks, when they’re alone like this and whatever it is that’s going on between them, whatever they call it, belongs only to them. No one else has a say in these moments. No one else has a say in Feyre’s future.

There’s no wedding next week to Tamlin, her father’s faithful business associate, even though she doesn’t really love him. There’s no animosity between the family patriarchs, no old feuds and unresolved battles that have played themselves out again and again as the body count rises until the streets are flooded with blood and tears. It reminds her too much of something dark and Dickensian—wine and blood and a call for revenge so savage that even innocence won’t save you from the guillotine.

But here, in this cream-colored room, with the walls and the paintings and the light so subdued as the rain falls gently on the giant window overlooking the city of her family’s great enemy—in this room, she can fool herself into believing that she and Rhys exist separately from that world. They live here, in this moment, in this room, with the quiet sound of rain and the feeling of Rhys’ bare chest beneath her hands and his perfectly soft hair twirled around one finger while she looks up at him.

“Am I?” Rhys turns to her then, bangs flopping over his high forehead and obscuring his violet eyes before Feyre moves quickly to brush them away. She traces the curve of his cheek, follows the lines of his jaw, lets her thumb rest on his chin softly as she meets his gaze. She loves it when he looks at her like this, with that slight smile that’s almost a smirk. Rhys by nature is overconfident and predatory, that smirk of his a trademark of the temper and violence that’s lurking just beneath the surface, but when he looks at Feyre, it’s softened.

When he looks at Feyre, Rhys thinks, he feels a kind of awe. She loves him. _She_ loves _him._ After everything their families have been through, the hatred and violence that’s marked their days more than any other events in their lives, Feyre Archeron loves Rhysand Night.

“You were,” Feyre confirms. Her thumb moves higher, tracing over lips that had met hers not so long ago. Lips, she remembers, that had explored every inch of her until she’d cried out in a sinful bliss.

“My apologies, Feyre, darling.” It takes all his self-control not to let his eyes drift closed and lean into her touch. It’s gentle, he thinks. Reverent. “I was merely watching the rain.”

“Liar,” Feyre accuses. She inches a little closer to him in the bed, letting out a contented sigh when Rhys’ arm pinned beneath her pulls her closer and she settles into the crook of his shoulder, so close that they’re sharing breaths. “Where do you go when you do that?”

Rhys’ lips part at the question, wanting so badly to answer that he can’t stop himself. He loves these moments—the embraces, the whispered promises, the way she looks at him like he’s a real person rather than the heir to one of the most influential and shadiest families in Prythian. But he can’t help himself. He just can’t. He wants more. “I was thinking of taking you on a date.”

Feyre couldn’t have imagined a better response. She purses her lips in a self-conscious smile as her blue eyes seem to brighten in the dim light of the hotel room—a shining glow of excitement in a sea of creams and grays. “You were?”

“I want to take you to dinner somewhere,” Rhys confesses. It’s a relief to say it, to hear the words rather than just thinking them. “I want to go to your studio and watch you paint. I want—” He pauses, trying to find the words.

The problem is that there’s so much Rhys wants to do, to _be_ , with Feyre. He wants everything. All of it. Completely. He can’t hope to list everything that he wants. He can’t even bring himself to think of all of them.

“I want to run away with you.”

The words are out before Rhys can stop them, and when they’re spoken, he can’t take them back. But the truth is that Rhys doesn’t want to, wouldn’t if he could. He can’t help wanting more with Feyre, even though they’ve never really said as much to each other. They’ve kept this thing between them secret, never even daring to speak of the possibility of _more_ because they knew it couldn’t happen.

Not for them. Feyre Archeron and Rhysand Night are not meant to be.

“Run away with me, Feyre.”

The room seems darker than it did only seconds ago as Feyre gazes at Rhys. The air is cold and heavy, humid with the rain outside and tense with Rhys’ declaration…with his request.

“What? Rhys, what are…what are you talking about?” There’s panic in Feyre’s voice. She can feel the rush of adrenaline at the suggestion, the way her stomach feels lighter and twists, her body torn between freezing and trembling. Rhys rolls to his side to face her, taking the hand that had been stroking his face and wrapping his own around it in a grip that’s sure, that’s steadying to Feyre in her shock.

“We could do it,” Rhys’ tells her in a low voice, rushed with a feeling of urgency and desperation. “You and me. We leave this hotel. We get in the car. We just go.”

“You—you want to leave Velaris?”

“I want to leave Prythian.” Rhys holds her hand against his chest in an unconscious gesture, as if he’s trying to keep her close and he could lose her at any moment. That’s the problem, though, Rhys thinks in a panic. This existence they have is tenuous, the feud ready to erupt in another wave of bloodshed at any moment. Rhys _could_ lose Feyre. “I want to go somewhere with you and have a life together. I…” Rhys needs a second to steady himself, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against hers as he tries to make his thoughts cooperate instead of coming out in a rush. “I want to marry you and have children and watch them grow and—and not have to worry about losing any of you because our families hate each other. Run away with me, Feyre. We can do it. We just have to leave together.”

Feyre’s naked body is pressed against his now, but there’s nothing sexual about this contact. It’s all fear and the need to be close, to hold onto something that can ground them in this moment. Feyre needs to hold on, needs to feel that he’s there.

She needs to fight the urge to say yes and to throw the blankets of them, get out of bed, scramble for her clothes, and just disappear with Rhys. They could go to the seaside, she realizes then. They could travel abroad. They could make a living somehow and find a little house somewhere in the countryside. Feyre could paint and not have to hide her sketches of Rhys. She wouldn’t have to worry every moment of every day that they could get caught and what their families might do. She can see Rhys as a father, imagine a little boy who looks exactly like him except for having her mouth. She could grow old with Rhys, love him with her whole heart, live a life unencumbered instead of being terrified and forced to pretend to be something she’s not.

She wouldn’t have to marry Tamlin. She would never have to see Tamlin again.

But she can’t escape the truth of it. “They would find us.” It comes out as a sob, so deep in her heartache. “They would look for us for the rest of our lives.”

“They won’t find us.”

“They will.”

“I won’t let them, Feyre,” Rhys says it, his voice low and filled with the same pain as Feyre. “I won’t let them find us. We can do this. I can keep us safe.”

Feyre shakes her head. It hurts too much to think about, to imagine any other life when she knows that it can’t be. “Tamlin will never let me go, you know that.”

“ _I don’t care about Tamlin_ ,” Rhys growls. He’s tangled a hand in her hair, softly angling her face up for him as he tries with everything he has to convince her. “I don’t care about Tamlin, Feyre. I don’t care. I want to be with you. Please, Feyre. _Please_. Just trust me and we’ll go.”

Feyre wants it. She wants it. She wants to run away, to live a normal life, to be with Rhys. She wants to marry him and hold their baby in her arms and see that little boy grow up. She wants to be anywhere but here.

“What about my sisters?”

Nesta and Elain. Feyre closes her eyes and pictures them in her mind. Sweet, funny Elain, who married Grayson and lives in a mansion with her own greenhouse. Nesta, who’s always angry and cynical and smokes too much and whose words always have a sharp edge.

Rhys has no answer. He wants to tell her that it doesn’t matter. He wants to tell her to leave, to let her sisters figure it out. _Choose me_ , he thinks desperately. _Run away with me_.

But he doesn’t say it and the words Feyre say next feel like a dagger to his heart, the knife plunging and twisting and all he can do is bleed. “What about your sister? And your mom?”

His mother—the beautiful, smart, gentle woman who’d been married off to his father when she’d barely been more than a girl. He’d grown up watching her smile, listening to her sing and tell them fairy stories. He’d grown up watching her roll sleeves over bruised arms and find the exact shade of makeup to hide her black eyes and split lips. He’d watched his sister run to her room and hide in the closet when the fighting started, knowing that the only safe place to be was not in the middle of it.

Rhys had grown up standing in between them, taking the beating himself.

He can’t leave them, not to that fate. He can’t abandon them to whatever life his father deems fit, to whatever suitor he finds for Alina, to whatever next step this feud takes.

To whatever aftermath their leaving Prythian causes.

“I just want to be with you.”

Rhys can count on one hand the number of times he’s really cried in his life. The first time his father hit him. The first time he saw someone die. The first time he took a life.

The first time he fell truly, madly in love with a woman—the daughter of his sworn enemy—and lost her to a senseless feud that would eventually destroy the both of them.

“I love you, Rhys.” Feyre doesn’t try to stop the tears. She lets them fall, resting her face against Rhys’ chest. She wants to run away with him, she wants to be with him. She doesn’t want Tamlin. She doesn’t want anything of her father’s.

And Rhys…even in the stunned silence that followed Feyre’s question, even in the realization that he can’t leave his mother and sister behind, that they can’t run away together…even in that, Rhys refuses to give up. “ _Marry me in secret, then_.”

Eventually, Feyre brings herself under enough control to pull away and look up at Rhys again, at that earnest look in his eyes, and leans forward to press her lips against his. Rhys rolls her back on the bed and climbs on top of her, one leg settling between hers, their fingers entwining, and they get lost in the promise of Feyre’s whispered _yes._

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are *always* appreciated as I live for external validation.
> 
> And cookies.


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